I don’t know why he did it. Surely he could have picked up the phone and called somebody. I am going back in my mind to age 17 when I first desperately needed help, after my father tried to touch me. I was thinking about the money, why I have never had enough money, and the Lord showed me the vow of poverty I took at the state hospital, that somebody took me seriously on that; and that when I had money and my own place–even when I was a mother–all I did with that time and freedom was to smoke. So I prayed the Memorare to St. Joseph, a prayer for bounty; and he took me back to age 17–the other pact I made. “I am going to kill myself by smoking myself to death by age 35 by getting lung cancer.” And I was serious. And I knew that I was doing wrong. But I didn’t know that I knew. I had no religious formation. I was at a top, Episcopalian boarding school and I never even went to the Sunday church services. They found this out about me when I went back to school after what my father did to me (I didn’t tell anybody.) They were scared for me.
So the Lord just left me to figure all this out. Now I am getting baptised. I have had YEARS of religious formation. And now my own life is putty in my hands. My mother is calling me for an omelette. She has committed crimes against me. I just went out to smoke (one cigarette, my first all day, it is 6:30 p.m.) The 6:00 church bells were ringing. There is a church around the corner from here on the hilltop. You see it from the distance as you drive here.
My brother is dead
It is a watershed moment.
‘
